Fruitvale park celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day with immersive Ohlone exhibit

Two days before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in Fruitvale will hold a grand opening celebration of “Indigenous Voices” a park-wide exhibition that has transformed the site into an immersive experience of Ohlone history and its enduring artistic voices.

The exhibition will bring together the work of more than 10 artists, including Ohlone culture bearers, to commemorate the revival of Ohlone history in the East Bay. The core is a 12-foot sculpture that represents SII, the Chochenyo word for “water,” in the creek area, made by Walter Hood of Hood Design Studio, in partnership with the Ohlone community and Hood’s artist, Sarita Schreiber.

Curator Holly Alonso, who has been putting the exhibition together for the past five years, said she wanted to create a space where stories of people who have shaped Fruitvale could be made tangible.

“We’ve made our business to make living history, the history of people here now, their very lives, the texture of their real lives, and real experience as a mirror of history and not just something that is somehow buried and static in the past,” Alonso said.

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Two hundred years ago, the park was the center of life for the Peralta family, settlers who arrived in Alta and established a 45,000-acre cattle ranch, with a land grant from the Spanish governor. Native people had lived on the land for 15,000 years before the Peraltas arrived, according to the Peralta Hacienda website.

Corrina Gould, Deja’s mother and spokesperson of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, has taken part in the permanent exhibition. She wrote a poem especially for this sculpture to reflect the historical relationship between language and belonging.

“That land, those waters, those trees, that have been here for thousands of years, are yearning to hear that language, that language that brings us home,” Gould wrote.

Oakland North reached out to Gould, who did not offer an immediate comment.

After its grand opening, the exhibition will be open during regular park hours, from sunrise to sunset, while the Peralta House Museum opens from noon to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Visitors can expect to see the work of the renowned artist and member of the Rumsen Ohlone Tribal Community, Linda Yamane. The exhibition features her illustrations and basketry, woven with willow, sedge and bracken fern from the Ohlone Basketry Garden. Yamane also illustrated and wrote the outdoor “Kaknú Story Path,” a series of panels telling the story of a mythical peregrine falcon and his battle with an underworld figure.

Susanne Takehara, former co-producer at EastSide Arts Alliance, created a mosaic mural of Yamane’s ear ornaments at Yamane’s request, translating a photograph of her beadwork into mosaic tile. Takehara said the permanent exhibition will deepen visitors’ understanding of the Ohlone people’s historical connection to the land and help keep their culture alive in Oakland.

“I wanted to do something deeper that would educate the community surrounding us, our neighbors, and people walking by,” Takehara said.

Visitors are invited to read Robert Gonzalez’s graphic novel on native workers on the Peralta rancho and also watch a short Rick Tejada-Flores film, “Who Did the Work?” It is about the native people who helped build and maintain the rancho.

Tejada-Flores said it took about a year to put the pieces together. For him, it was essential to have Ohlone people’s eyes on the scripts before moving forward to ensure accuracy in its historical account, which ranges from the missions to the ranches, the gold rush and the ongoing struggle to keep the native communities and their language alive. 

“The main thing is just to remind people: They’re here, and it was such a struggle, but they survived, and they’re not going to go away,” Tejada-Flores said.

In the grand opening celebration, visitors can also participate in hands-on activities and Ohlone games for children, as well as learn Ohlone original songs.

“If one can just take a deep breath and step aside, and look over those walls of the contemporary world that surround us, and see that beauty, the length of span of time, of East Bay history, it will really bridge every moment,” Alonso said.

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